How does O'Brien be allowed to be Barn Boss???I know he beat up viking and tweety with soda cans ...but so do the counselor/guards .Why do they acknowledge that he is barn boss .Aren't they in essence rewarding him for bad behavior?????
shareI don't believe the consolers fought with Viking and Tweety, but they should have seen some of the crap that they did. (Like throwing Terrell over the railing and killing him.) I could see O'brien as the hero for beating them up with the soda cans. But the real question is WHY were these bullying people given "privilege" by the staff before O'brien got to Rainford? Viking and Tweety are the guys that the other inmates would like to gang up on and beat the living sh!t out of them.
There was nothing good about those dudes.
Joe
Related subject: Why does everyone get all somber in the class room when they find out (minor spoiler) that Tweety got killed? The guy was a jerk. You would think most of those guys would be doing cartwheels around the room.
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jdun, I know what you're saying - and I feel that's what the scene was meant to convey - but I didn't buy it. Like you said, they were tough and I think they would have been high-fiving each other when a guy that had spent the last God-knows-how-long screwing with them bought the farm. At a minimun, it meant they wouldn't be seeing him again on the inside...
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About the reaction to Tweety dying, I don't think anyone really care about him (except Viking), but the news was disturbing because it was the only individual a lot of the boys had seen get released from the facility and he died shortly after. I felt it just drove home the point that, even if they were let out, they were still not going to succeed.
shareThat's the way it works man, if you rearrange their faces, you're IT man.
Of course they're rewarding him for his bad behaviour but they also
keep the animals in control ...
'Dim X as Integer = 0'
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And to a point, Horiwitz ends up doing to Viking what everybody had been wanting to do even before O'Brien beat the crap out of him and Tweety.
But Horiwitz didn't get away with it, like Tweety did for tossing that kid over the railing.
Living in the penthouse must be nice, but it's a shorter fall from the basement. -Florida Evans
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It struck me the counselor/guards knew that the other kids would look upon O'Brien as their true leader. One would conclude Viking and Tweety became Barn Bosses by doing the same thing O'Brien had done.
shareIt's really simple. If you beat the living sh!t out of the king of the jungle, you are the new king. Nevermind the guards. The guards go home at night, this isn't their world. No one is going to mess with Sean Penn after they see him visciously assault the two guys that everyone else is AFRAID of. They wouldn't mess with the rape brothers, so why would they give any crap to the guy that beats them savagely with a pillow case full of cans.
If you are a the lone watchman on duty of these guys that outnumber you 50 to one, you are going to need someone to keep them in line. Sean Penn is it.
^^^^This. And you'll help that guy out (c'mon, that cigarette deal doesn't happen without the guards) to help you out.
shareI don't buy it. If all you had to do to become the Barn Boss was to beat up the person who currently held the title then everyone in that place would have been trying to kick O'Brien's ass.
shareJust a note: In real juvenile detentions, the "Barn Boss" is actually called "The Hammer".
shareAs we all learned in 21 Jump Street's Bad Boys rip-off storyline. ;)
shareTrue! The hammer. But there was sooo many inaccuracies in this movie given its setting. Growing up in Chicago and having neighborhood friends who spent time in St Charles reformatory (Rainford in the movie) this is of course total BS. First off, Just like the adult prisons, things are super racial in lockup so Tweety and Viking would have probably not have been friends at all due to the HEAVY Gang culture that Chicago had around that time *that 90% of males of all races got swept up in. Viking and Obrien, the Italian dude and others would have had to be allies against Tweety and the other Black and Latino gang members who would have been extorting and humiliating them. Terrell would possibly have been allowed to join one of the gangs (if he wasn't a member BEFORE getting locked up) considering he wasn't 'too soft' in which case then he would have probably been raped and or disrespected for not being tough enough.
I do believe that a man who has sex with another male is by definition: Gay, but it's even more than that in jail...it's also about dominance and humiliation, that was the only way that Terrell could be Totally Humiliated and the other inmates to know that Tweety was the dude who could Do anything that he wanted. And Horowitz would have been EVERYONE'S 'Toy' in there...LOL
The "inside" of the prison is not St. Charles, the exterior is.
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Because Sean Penn was the star and had top billing.
It has to do with the system being corrupt and having some big guy in there who is a prisoner keep the others in line.
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